Video Games: Free, Cheap, and Mutating

If you were to ask me, the best way to PC game is on the cheap. There are always sales happening in the video game world as the “value” of a game decreases within hours of its release. Just try to trade your games back to any gaming boutique and you will realize how swiftly your investment has plummeted.

This is all the better for me. When I was younger I would wait in midnight lines for new releases and handover my $59.99 plus tax for the joy of being among the first to slowly go cross-eyed staring at my monitor. Now I put games on my wish list. I sit and I wait for the emails to come rolling in a month later with a 50% discount. Even then I usually decide to wait longer. It is the year after mark that is really the sweet spot.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think you should support the things you love, and I do. Mostly I give my full-price money to Indie games now, but a game full of strong women with a good story-line from a AAA publisher will get my cash too. There is just only so much full-price spending I can do.

The best places for these sales are often from the distributors or their services. Origin and Steam are both digital gaming services that keep track of your game purchases and house them in their libraries. However, this usually means that the games purchased through them are DRM protected, which is a pain if you have a lot of siblings to share with as I do. They do have some stellar sales though.

Origin is giving Dragon Age: Origins away for FREE right now, until October 14th. I highly urge you all to take advantage of this deal as soon as possible. DA: Origins is an Adventure Role-Playing Game that is full of hilarious dialogue, great side quests, and around 80 hours of gameplay. All you need is to download the Origin software (free) and register. Origin is a part of Electronic Arts and offers games published by all EA branches.

Screencap from Origin website.

Steam has sales continuously and they will remind you via email if any of your wish list items go on sale. I am a big Steam fan. I love their community, their deals, their huge range of games, the badges they award. This week their sale is 33% off all the Assassin Creed games. Once again, all you need is to download Steam and register to start taking advantage of some awesome deals.

Screencap from the Steam website.

Now, there are also sites that offer much older games at huge discounts. There is Humble Bundle, which is a website where you pick how much you want to pay for a bunch of games and the money goes to the sponsored charities of the week (you choose between the two). This week’s games are all Nordic Games and if you give above the average amount you get more games in your bundle. Games purchased through the Humble Bundle are released to you via Steam.

GOG.com is another great deals site. GOG stands for Good Old Games and that is exactly what they offer. You pick how many of them you want to buy and there are often rewards associated with each purchase. Right now their Mutator Promo lets you unlock a mystery $2 game for every three games you buy. It is like a grab bag and I have never been able to say no to a grab bag.